Glenn Reynolds Says

Proud Member of the Alliance

Monday, February 21, 2005

The vicious avian flu that has killed dozens of people in Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere in the region "has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of animals in nearly a dozen Asian countries" in the past two years and could kill millions of people if it becomes capable of spreading efficiently among humans, Michael Specter reports in "Nature's Bioterrorist" (p.50), in the February 28, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.

Was SARS just a warning - a test - of what is to come when this thing starts spreading human-to-human? Could this be contained if it were to break out here?
"This is the worst flu virus I have ever seen or worked with or read about," he says. "We have to prepare as if we were going to war-and the public needs to understand that clearly. This virus is playing its role as a natural bioterrorist."

Meanwhile, this article out of The Independent states that:
Thailand, one of two countries at the centre of the bird flu outbreak, is refusing to act against its spread, scuppering attempts to stop a devastating pandemic expected to kill tens of millions of people around the globe.